Useful phrases for IELTS Speaking

Useful phrases for when you don’t know what to say in the IELTS Speaking test

There will probably be times in your IELTS Speaking test when you don’t know what to say. You may be asked a difficult question by the examiner, for example, or not be able to remember the right word to say what you mean.

To help you avoid hesitating for too long when you don’t know what to say, I’ve put together some useful phrases that you can use in IELTS Speaking, and Jason R Levine (Fluency MC) has written a rap to help you remember some of them.

Useful phrases for IELTS Speaking that you can learn in minutes

Check out Jason’s video below and, when you’ve listened a couple of times, repeat the phrases to the music so that you learn to say them in a natural way.

More useful phrases for IELTS Speaking

To help you prepare for other situations in your IELTS Speaking test when you may know what to say, I’ve put some more useful phrases in the infographic below.

So now it’s time to learn and practice saying some of these phrases. If you haven’t done so already, listen to Jason’s video above a couple of times and then repeat the useful phrases to the music yourself.

If you use these phrases in your IELTS Speaking test when you don’t know what to say, you’ll hopefully sound more fluent and this may help you get a higher IELTS Speaking band score.

I’d be interested to hear if you find the phrases easier to learn using Jason’s rap in the video.

Students hesitate for different reasons, and the infographic clearly shows what to say in different situations. Knowing what to say is important, but it is not good enough. Although there are a lot of students that use such phrases, they often sound like they are reading from a script. I think what’s equally important, if not more, is how they say them, and repeating after the phrases to the music is a fun and easy way of learning to say them more naturally. It might not help them (or make them sound strange/funny) if they are beat deaf though!